Biomedical Services

1. The quarantine unit (one animal room) houses mice delivered from other institutes until they are “cleaned” by embryo transfer, and enables scientists to perform short-term experiments without having to wait.
2. Easy access rodent rooms (one to three rooms) offer temporary housing for mice in short term experiments, either from an internal source, or from a trusted external source with a pathogen free background.
3. The SPF (Specific Pathogen Free) experimental barrier unit (six to nine animal rooms) is the largest unit and holds most of the experimental mice of MPI-CBG. Mouse users have limited access to this area. 

4. The most secure unit is the full SPF barrier unit (two to four animal rooms). It is solely used to produce new transgenic, KO and KI mice, and access is limited to BMS and TCF (Transgenic Core Facility) staff members.

The main services currently provided are:

• Animal husbandry and colony management
• Technical service incl. minor procedures (e.g. organ collection, biopsies, injections) and experimental service (e.g. blood values, special feeding regimes, glucose testing, perfusions)
• Veterinary services, including surgical interventions
• Health monitoring and reporting
• Import and export of mice, quarantine service, rederivation service in collaboration with Transgenic Core Facility
• Animal Welfare service, including advice and support in license applications for animal experiments
• Record keeping (PyRAT database) and phenotyping all new strains as required by the animal welfare regulations
• Training and certifying users for required procedures and animal welfare (according to EU and FELASA recommendations)

Aquatics Units - Fish Unit and Frog Unit
The Fish Unit (two primary fish rooms, one quarantine room) is located in the basement of the main laboratory building. The Frog Unit for Xenopus leavis frogs is a one-room unit in the basement of the main laboratory building currently serving only a handful of users. The main services currently provided for fish and frogs are:

• Animal husbandry and breeding
• Maintaining a good hygiene and healthy animals
• Technical service (e.g. embryo collection, sperm & embryo freezing)
• Record keeping
• Import and export of embryos and live animals, quarantine service

Fly Unit
The Fly Unit primarily prepares food for fly stocks, Fly kitchen is located at the basement of the main building. Currently Fly Unit also support some of the fly colonies and stock keeping. The main services currently provided are:

• Food production
• Basic husbandry and stock keeping (of some colonies)
• Record keeping

§3 Requirements and preparations

Biomedical Services (BMS) is accessible to authorized persons only. Every person who wants to perform animal experiments can only do so after they have demonstrated the necessary competence and expertise. The access to animals is only granted after the relevant documentation is presented to the Head of BMS, or his management team. The general requirements are as follows:

Project Leader (license number holder):

• Academic degree in life sciences
• Minimum of 3 years of experience working with laboratory animals
• The course according to FELASA recommendations (level B or C, or similar) completed, or similar competence level demonstrated

Performer

• Academic degree in life sciences, or applicable technical degree
• The course according to FELASA recommendations (level B or C, or similar) completed, or similar competence level demonstrated

All personnel working under protocols are included for the license application, and their credentials are checked and approved by the Overseeing body of the local government. Local government holds the official credentials. Project Leaders must file the protocol to the Animal Welfare Officer (AWO) for review. After the acceptance by the AWO the protocol can be then filed in for the governmental approval body, including the statement written separately by the AWO. Only after the acceptance by the governmental approval body can the work with animals begin.

In-house training is compulsory for all personnel involved in hand-on work with animals. This includes the following steps:

• Animal Facility Introduction with one of the members of the management. This includes introduction to animal space, labs and general accessible areas, how to request a service, opening hours and access privileges. This is compulsory training required to gain access to the facility (key card).
• For all procedures defined by the individual accepted protocols a hands-on training will be offered by experienced staff member. This will be documented.

To prevent any pathogens to spread to our animal colonies, minimum of 48-hour cool-down (quarantine) must be followed by all those people who have been visiting another animal facility (including our own Quarantine in UG). 

Prior appointment must be made for granting the access to any animal holding area (only for rodents). BMS staff will accompany all scientists during the visit.

General access hours are as follows:
Mon – Fri:  09:00 – 16:00
Sat, Sun & Holidays 09:00 – 12:00

BMS has several labs for experimental procedures. No animals are allowed to be removed from BMS premises. For specific requirements or instruments needed please inform BMS staff. Prior appointment should be made for using these labs if the use is considered heavy and/or long term.

All requests for an appointment or work requests (animal orders, genotyping, killing, breeding etc.) must be received via PyRAT Work Request system (or alternatively by email (bms(at)mpi-cbg.de)) latest 14:00 on the previous working day. Please do not send any requests to an individual email addresses – always use the generic one shown above.

§4 Booking and recharge system

Projects are discussed with the facility head and only after his agreement, a first quote is sent to the user. After confirmation of the offer by the user, the service can be performed. An invoice is sent to the User or assigned to a project cost center (for an MPI-CBG grant) only after the results have been delivered. 

As per internal policy, internal users have a higher priority, however, the facility head decides the feasibility of the project before starting and may reject requests at his sole discretion. 

Internal users receive a monthly report where the usage of the facility is summarized, whereas non-internal users receive an invoice on a quarterly basis.

The MPI-CBG has developed a unique online central user management system (‘Centralized Billing and Recharge System’ or ‘CBRS’) that combined with a tracking and booking system, enables an accurate and transparent recharge. Three user categories (external, collaborator and internal) ensure only eligible project specific costs are invoiced to grants while full costs are invoiced to external users.

§5 Cost calculation

The MPI-CBG provides a high level of research services and facilities to the research groups, in the most cost effective way and making the most efficient use of combined resources. 

Users are charged a user fee according to the project specific usage of the resources and, depending on the User’s relationship with the MPI-CBG, will be invoiced on the basis of the three categories mentioned above:

“Internal users” are staff members of MPI-CBG, including employees, stipend holders, guest scientists / CBG-Fellows, and other research groups belonging to the Max Planck Society. Internal users are charged project specific personnel and consumables costs. Internal user prices are recharged to all grants awarded to the MPI-CBG and consist only of eligible costs. Importantly, such ‘Internal invoices’ represent a lower cost burden to the grant than is permitted by the funding agencies (DFG, BMBF, EU, ERC) since instrument depreciation is not included. 

“Collaborators” are formally working together with an MPI-CBG research group. The status “Collaborator” needs to be approved by the Chief Operating Officer ‘COO’ of the MPI-CBG. A Collaboration Agreement is mandatory for each ‘Collaborator’ user status and has to be supported by additional documentation e.g. a joint grant application, jointly supervised student or postdoctoral fellow, or collaboration within a consortium. Collaborators are charged personnel, consumables and equipment depreciation.

“External users” are all users who are neither internal nor collaborators. They are charged full costs including personnel, consumables, equipment depreciation and indirect costs (administrative indirect costs related to personnel and building indirect costs related to building running costs).

Prices are adjusted on a yearly basis.

§6 Intellectual property rights

MPI-CBG Services and Facilities provide their support and perform their services as a service provider and deliver the work results of such services without making claim to intellectual property pertaining to or related to the work results. As such and for the avoidance of doubt, all intellectual property rights pertaining to or related to the work results remain with and are owned by the user. Inventions and improvements or modifications to the technology platforms of the MPI-CBG Services and Facilities that do not incorporate the work results but that may have been discovered and/or reduced to practice during the course of performing the services belongs to the MPI-CBG and Max Planck Society and are covered by the respective Intellectual Property policy of the Max Planck Society.

§7 Acknowledgements

Work performed and data generated in the MPI-CBG core services and facilities requires the acknowledgement of the relevant service or facility if the work results of MPI-CBG Services and Facilities are used in scientific publications, papers, posters, presentations, grant applications, reports or other publications. The standard sentence for acknowledging the MPI-CBG Services and Facilities is: “We would like to thank the following Services and Facilities of the MPI-CBG for their support: Name of the Facility/Facilities”. A copy of the publication(s) acknowledging the support of MPI-CBG Services and Facilities shall be sent to the relevant MPI-CBG Services and Facilities Leader.

§8 Responsibilities

The user has to comply with the MPI-CBG "General Laboratory Regulations" and "Operating Instructions S1" and Operating Instructions S2" as well as any other relevant operating instructions that may apply to the scope of work executed at MPI-CBG.

The user has to comply with all instructions given by the MPI-CBG Service Leader or appointed supervisor within the facility and report any problems or safety relevant issues to the MPI-CBG supervisor.

Users are obliged to notify the Services and Facility Leader on malfunction or damage of the instruments without delay. 

External users are responsible for being insured by their employer or affiliated institute during their stay at MPI-CBG, and are liable for any damage caused by them during their stay.

§9 Data handling

The central storage systems of MPI-CBG provides network protocol (SMB and NFS) access to storage and is connected to the internal network of the MPI-CBG. Access control to this storage is created on a project basis and access can be easily configured to be shared between service and facility members, researchers, groups, and any others with MPI-CBG accounts. 

All data on the central storage is written to two tape copies in addition to being on disk and one copy is removed to offsite storage in order to assure that all data can be restored in case of a disaster. Projects when closed or published remain on tape and are archived according to good scientific practice. Access to the central storage systems is, in general, limited to internal users.  

Internal users have free access to and utilize the central storage systems of the MPI-CBG for the data generated and used by the services and facilities.

Collaborators may request access to this central storage for the duration of the collaboration. This request is routed through the internal host lab collaborating with the external user who takes responsibility for the guest during their stay.

External users are requested to consult with the service or facility they are using to determine what type of data storage facilities they will require.  The general rule is that data is stored within the MPI-CBG temporarily while processing or captured but should be moved to the home institution of the user as soon as is reasonably possible. The MPI-CBG provides tools to exchange data between the services and facilities and the home institution of external users.  As the size and type of data varies significantly between the service and facilities the recommended method of transfer also varies.  In the case of microscopy data external users are allowed to use the local storage attached to the individual microscopes for data storage for up to one month.  After this time data is deleted automatically to make space for new data capture.  In the case of exceptional data set size this time period may be reduced in order to support the number of users using the systems.

The MPI-CBG IT Department is willing to work with other institutions when required to establish methods to temporarily store, move, and synchronize data to the external user’s institution if the project or usage of the facilities requires it.